Conference: SPIE

Date: 2000
Published Papers
High reliability coolers under
development at Signaal-USFA
Page: 1 of 9
Conference naam SPIE
Conference year 2002
Title of paper High reliability coolers under development at Signaal-USFA
Authors of paper
M. Meijers, A.A.J . Benschop and J .C. Mulli
Signaal-USFA P.O.box 6034 5600 HA
Eindhoven, The Netherlands



ABSTRACT
Since 1997, Signaal Usfa has been working on the development of high reliability cryocoolers. These
coolers have been developed with the aim to eliminate the lifetime determining factors of conventional
cryogenic tactical coolers. The intention of this study was the development of a family of cryocoolers,
which could be used to cover a large range of cooling powers. Today, these developments have resulted
in the new range of flexure bearing cryocoolers currently available at Signaal Usfa, with cooling
performances between 0.5 and 3 W @80K and estimated lifetimes of more than 20,000 hours MTTF.
The basis for the extended lifetime of these coolers is our unique flexure-bearing compressor with moving
magnet technology. Inside the linear dual opposed piston compressor both moving pistons are fully
supported at the back and front of the piston by optimised flexure bearings. With this flexure bearing
suspension, side loads on the piston-seals are avoided. A proper alignment procedure ensures no contact
between piston and cylinder during operation, resulting in absence of wear of the piston coating, which
normally determines the lifetime of a cooler.
The moving magnet technology, as applied in our flexure bearing compressor, has several major
advantages over moving coil linear motors as applied in most conventional linear compressors. First of all
the coils, known to be a possible source for gas contamination, can be placed outside the hermetically
sealed compressor housing containing the working gas. Avoiding any synthetic materials inside the cooler
reduces the risk of gas contamination during the life of the cooler. The fact that the coils can be placed
outside the hermetically sealed compressor also means that no glass feed-throughs are required. In this
way, risks of glass feed-through leakage due to extreme temperature shocks or mechanical shocks are no
longer present. Finally, the absence of moving coils in the compressor design also means that flying leads
to supply power to the coils are no longer required.
Several qualification tests have been performed on flexure bearing cryocoolers with different sizes of
coldfingers resulting in technical specifications currently available at Signaal Usfa on all presented cooler
types in the above mentioned range. A flexure-bearing cooler for applications requiring over 6 Watts
cooling power at 80K is currently under development as well. Tests performed on a first prototype of this
cooler have been successful. A cooling performance of more than 8W @80K for 23C ambient
temperature with 150 Wac input power has been measured.

LIFETIME LIMITATIONS OF A LINEAR STIRLING CRYOCOOLER
In conventional linear Stirling cryocoolers, the lifetime of the cooler is limited by the compressor. Inside a
linear compressor, usually two pistons, driven by moving coil linear motors, are translating in opposite
phase generating a pressure wave in the compression space between the pistons, which is connected to
the warm end of the coldfinger. The magnitude of the generated pressure wave directly determines the
cooling performance obtained with a certain Stirling coldfinger or pulse tube.
To prevent gas leakage along the pistons inside the compressor, which reduces the generated pressure
wave and thus the cooling performance, close tolerance seals are often applied. The principle of close
tolerance seals is a very small annular gap between the piston and the cylinder. Typically, this gap has a

Conference: SPIE
Date: 2000
Published Papers
High reliability coolers under
development at Signaal-USFA
Page: 2 of 9
length of a few centimetres, which prevents gas to flow from the compression space to a larger (buffer)
space behind the pistons.
To limit the gas flow along the pistons to an acceptable level, the gap between the piston and the cylinder
should be as small as possible. However, it should still allow piston movement at different ambient
temperatures between 52 C and +71 C. In practice the initial gap between the piston and cylinder will
be around 10 microns. Increase of this gap due to wear of the coating applied on the piston increases the
flow along the piston. In fact, the gas flow through the annular gap between the piston and cylinder is
dependent on the gap height to the third power.
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Figure 1. Results of measurements to investigate the impact of the gap
between piston and cylinder on the efficiency of the cooler
To determine the impact of an increase of the gap height between piston and cylinder on the efficiency of
the cooler in practice, several measurements were performed on Stirling cooler at Signaal Usfa. In figure
1, the results of these measurements are depicted for a Stirling cooler with a 5-mm cold finger. In this
figure, a graph is shown in which the measured cooling performance is plotted against the input power to
the cooler. Besides for the standard initial gap of 10 microns between piston and cylinder this is also done
for larger gaps of 17 microns and 20 microns. Clearly, the big impact of the flow losses along the piston on
the efficiency of the cooler can be seen. From these measurements, it was concluded that for piston
diameter reductions of more than about 10 microns, specified cooling performances were no longer met.

HIGH RELIABILITY COOLERS AT SIGNAAL-USFA: A HISTORICAL OVERVIEW
Lifetime tests on various cooler types at Signaal Usfa have shown that with conventional compressors
wear of a PTFE-based coating, due to contact between piston and cylinder, limits the lifetime to about
4,000 - 10,000 hours, depending of the cooler type. In order to ensure higher MTTF values of more than
20,000 hours wear of the pistons should be eliminated. The only way to ensure this is by avoiding contact
between piston and cylinder.
Study of possibilities to avoid contact between piston and cylinder (1997)
In 1997, Signaal Usfa initiated an internal development program investigating different possibilities to
increase the lifetime of linear Stirling cryocoolers. Key goal in this development was to avoid contact
between piston and cylinder as this was considered the only possibility to obtain lifetimes of more than
20,000 hours. Two different principles with which this could be achieved were studied and worked out in

Conference: SPIE
Date: 2000
Published Papers
High reliability coolers under
development at Signaal-USFA
Page: 3 of 9
different compressor designs. In the end, these compressor designs were compared on different criteria
like: compressor efficiency, design complexity, compressor size and weight and cost price of the cooler.
The first principle studied was the application of gas-bearings. With gas-bearings, the piston and cylinder
are separated by a thin layer of gas under pressure. Two different ways in which the build-up of gas
pressure can be achieved, often referred to as dynamic gas-bearings and static gas-bearings, were
studied and worked out in detail.
Although gas-bearings are applied by several manufacturers of linear compressors, we concluded that in a
final comparison it scored worst on almost all criteria mentioned above. The main disadvantages with
dynamic gas-bearings were the presence of an extra motor to rotate the piston and the connection of the
rotating piston to the compressor housing. Whereas with the static gas principle the reduction of efficiency
due to the extra flow losses and the unavoidable pump-up effect in the compressor lead to the decision
not to continue with this design principle.
Contact between piston and cylinder can be avoided when the moving piston is suspended in mechanical
springs, which offer a high radial stiffness and allow movement in axial direction. This can be achieved
with several types of springs, but we have studied a suspension in three folded leaf springs at both piston
ends and a suspension with flexure bearings at both piston ends. Again, both possibilities have been
worked out in detail. After several tests performed on both the folded leaf springs and the flexure bearings
in practice the conclusion was drawn that on all criteria mentioned above flexure bearings is the most
interesting solution.
First prototype flexure bearing cryocooler (1998)
Based on studies performed in 1997 a first flexure bearing cooler was build and tested in 1998. In figure 2,
a picture of this cooler is depicted.

Figure 2. First prototype flexure bearing cryocooler (1998)
With the first prototype flexure-bearing compressor that was connected to a 7mm Stirling coldfinger
several tests were performed, these have proved that the flexure bearing principle and the specially
developed alignment procedure were working correctly. As can be seen in figure 2 the compressor itself

Conference: SPIE
Date: 2000
Published Papers
High reliability coolers under
development at Signaal-USFA
Page: 4 of 9
was rather bulky due to the presence of flanges and bolt connections to be able to seal the compressor
with O-rings. However, this enabled us to dismount the compressor to inspect components after several
tests and verify that the flexure bearing suspension was working as expected.
Although several imperfections in the compressor design were found, the fact that the compressor was
working correctly after the first assembly and the results of several test which verified the working principle
of the flexure bearing suspension were very promising. End of 1998 the cooler was put in lifetime test in
which up to now (May 2000) it has accumulated over 12,000 hours of operation without degradation of
performance. The cooler has always been running at 80% of its maximum power generating a cooling
power of approximately 750 mW @80K and 23C ambient temperature.

Redesign of the first prototype flexure-bearing compressor (1999)
In the beginning of 1999, the flexure-bearing compressor was completely redesigned. Based on the
experiences obtained from tests on the first prototype several small design changes were introduced to
simplify the compressor assembly. In addition, the design was made more compact with the objective to
hermetically seal the compressor by laserwelding to be able to perform a complete qualification test
program. Beside this, also the flexures were redesigned by increasing the axial spring stiffness to limit
piston drift under all circumstances.
To supply current to the moving coils inside a linear compressor flying leads, which are electrical wires
connected to the glass feed-throughs in the compressor housing at one end and the coils of the linear
motor at the other end, are commonly applied. However, the flying lead connections are critical with
respect to reliability and require high precision in mounting during production. In the redesign of the
flexure-bearing compressor an innovative solution was introduced to replace the flying leads.
Based on the experiences obtained with flexure bearing and Finite Element Modeling (FEM) calculations
special spiral arms were designed to supply current to the moving coils in the redesigned flexure bearing
compressor. These flexible leads are very easy to mount during the compressor assembly and can be
designed with FEM tools to ensure absence of failures. In figure 3 the FEM model of a flexible lead and
photograph of a flexible lead mounted on a coil assembly is shown to illustrate the principle.
FLEXIBLE
Figure 3. a) Photograph of a flexible lead mounted on a coil assembly
b) FEM model for simulation of flexible lead.
Several flexure-bearing coolers were built with 10mm Stirling coldfingers and submitted to various
qualification tests. Cooling performance levels measured at ambient temperatures ranging from -52C to
+71C were excellent and showed that the efficiency of the cooler was according to expectations. The
length of the compressor is 180mm with a diameter of 75mm resulting in a total cooler weight of 3.5 kg.
Two coolers were put in a lifetime test at the beginning of 2000 and are still running without degradation.

Conference: SPIE
Date: 2000
Published Papers
High reliability coolers under
development at Signaal-USFA
Page: 5 of 9

Development of a compressor with moving magnet motor technology (1999)
Parallel to the redesign of the first prototype flexure bearing compressor in 1999 also the development of a
compressor with moving magnet technology was initiated at Signaal Usfa. With a moving magnet linear
motor, the magnets are connected directly to the pistons and the coilholders are part of the compressor
housing. This offers a number of advantages that increase reliability of the cooler and allow the
compressor design to be more compact.
(a) (b)
(c) (d)
Figure 4. Most important parts of moving magnet flexure bearing design
(a) coil system (b) moving magnet (c) single flexure (d) flexure pack
First, the fact that the coils are no longer moving means that flying leads or flexible leads are no longer
necessary to supply current to the coils. Absence of these components simplifies the compressor design
and assembly and reduces the compressor length.
In the final flexure-bearing compressor design, the coil-holder on which the coils are wound is part of the
housing of the compressor. This means that the coils are outside this housing and outside the working
gas. As the coil insulation consist of synthetic materials that can absorb moisture, bake out of components
and curing of the cooler under high vacuum at elevated temperatures is probably the most critical process
in the cooler production. With the removal of the coils outside the working gas, no more outgassing
components are present inside the cooler. This reduces the risk of gas contamination during the life of the
cooler.
Finally, the fact that the coils are located outside the hermetically sealed compressor means that also
glass feed-throughs are no longer required. Under extreme temperature shocks and severe mechanical

Conference: SPIE
Date: 2000
Published Papers
High reliability coolers under
development at Signaal-USFA
Page: 6 of 9
stresses on the cooler glass feed-throughs are known critical components that can crack resulting in gas
leakage.
All these advantages have lead to the conclusion that for a high reliability cryocooler moving magnet
technology in combination with flexure bearing suspension is the best solution to guarantee long lifetimes.

Final design of the flexure bearing cryocooler with moving magnets (1999/2000)
In the final design of the flexure-bearing compressor, we have been able to reduce the compressor
diameter to 60 mm and the length to 165-mm resulting in a cooler mass of 2.4 kg. With FEM calculations
performed on the flexures have lead to an optimised design with a high radial stiffness and low peak
stress levels. FEM calculations performed on the moving magnet linear motor have lead to an optimised
motor with an effective motor efficiency of more than 70% during operation. In figure 5 a photograph of a
cooler with a 5 and a 10mm coldfinger are depicted.

Figure 5. Photograph of the final flexure bearing coolers 9180 (5mm cold finger)
and 9188 (10mm cold finger)
Close to the end of 1999 several coolers were built and tested. In the beginning of 2000 two of these
coolers have successfully undergone a complete qualification test program including shock and vibration
tests. The shock and vibration tests performed are described in section 4. Furthermore, we have put four
coolers in lifetime test. One of these four coolers has also been tested in a centrifuge in which we have
applied radial accelerations on the compressor for 500 hours. We have increased the radial accelerations
starting with 2g up to a maximum of 10g. These tests have not resulted in degradation of the cooler. In
March 2000, three coolers with 5mm Stirling coldfingers were put in lifetime test.

NEW SIGNAAL USFA FLEXURE BEARING CRYOCOOLER FAMILY
Based on the final design flexure-bearing compressor with moving magnet linear motor a complete new
range of Stirling cryocoolers referred to as the LSF cryocooler family has been developed. This family
consists of four main types of slip-on cryocoolers with 5mm, 7mm, 10mm and 13mm Stirling coldfingers.
Qualification tests performed on these four coolers have resulted in technical specifications that are

Conference: SPIE
Date: 2000
Published Papers
High reliability coolers under
development at Signaal-USFA
Page: 7 of 9
currently available at Signaal Usfa. In figure 6 four graphs with specified performances of these coolers
are depicted.
Next to the described slip-on Stirling cold fingers, the compressors can also be connected to different
IDCA configurations. The matching of the compressor to these cold fingers is depending on the required
filling pressure and connected dead volume. In this may the developed technology used in the
compressors can be tuned for connection to a SADA I, SADA II and SADA IIIB IDCA cold fingers. The size
of the compressor remains identical.

LSF 9180
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LSF 9187
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LSF 9188
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LSF 9189
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Figure 6. Specified cooling performance at different ambient temperature levels for
four coolers of the LSF cryocooler family

QUALIFICATION TESTS.
The coolers presented above have been tested in a very demanding qualification test program prior to the
lifetime testing. The test specifications submitted to the coolers are given below.

Temperature testing
Dry Heat, operating (non-cyclic) : IEC 68-2-2 Test Bd
Temperature : +50 C 2 duration: 18 hours

Conference: SPIE
Date: 2000
Published Papers
High reliability coolers under
development at Signaal-USFA
Page: 8 of 9
Cold, operating : IEC 68-2-1 Test Ad
Temperature : -20 C 2 C, duration: 18 hours
Dry Heat, storage (non-cyclic) : IEC 68-2-2 Test Bd
Temperature : +90 C 2 C, duration: 72 hours
Cold, storage : IEC 68-2-1 Test Ab
Temperature : -55 C 3 C, duration: 72 hours
Change of Temp. (non-operating) : IEC 68-2-14 Test Nb
Low temperature Ta : -40 C
High temperature Tb : +71 C
Number of cycles : 5, duration: 3 hours
Shock and vibration testing
Repetitive Shock (operating) : IEC 68-2-29 Test Eb
Acceleration, duration : 20 g peak, 6ms (axial), 40 g peak, 6ms (radial)
Number : 2000 10 shocks each
Shock (operating) : IEC 68-2-27 Test Ea
Acceleration, duration : 100 g peak, 11ms
Direction, number : 3 axes, 3 shocks each
Vibration, Random (operating) : IEC 68-2-36 Test Fdb
Frequency range : 20 to 2000 Hz
Acceleration (rms) : 14 g
ASD-level (Spec. Dens.) : 0.1 g
2
/Hz (20-1000 Hz)
: -6 dB/octave (1000-2000 Hz)
Direction, Duration : 2 axes, 3 hours each
Vibration, Sinusoidal (operating) : IEC 68-2-6 Test Fc
Frequency range : 5 to 2000 Hz
Amplitude/Acceleration : 1.25 mm peak (5 to 14 Hz)
: 1 g peak (14 to 23 Hz)
: 0.45 mm peak (23 to 52 Hz)
: 5 g peak (52 to 2000 Hz)
Direction, Duration : 10 cycles of 1 octave/minute in 2 axes.
Endurance at resonance : 10 minutes/resonance

FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS
Besides the development of the new flexure bearing cryocooler family, Signaal Usfa has several other
development programs running. Two of these new developments are the development of a miniature pulse
tube cryocooler driven by a flexure bearing compressor and a high capacity Stirling cryocooler with flexure
bearing compressor.
Flexure bearing compressor with pulse tube coldfinger
During the past years, Signaal Usfa has been working on an analytic model of pulse tube refrigerators
based on harmonic approximations. This tool has made it possible to perform optimisation of different
design parameters determining pulse tube efficiency and helped us in understanding pulse tube
behaviour.
During the past months, we have been performing tests on a pulse tube coldfinger, which has a tube
diameter of 5mm. The pulse tube design is a U-shape configuration with inertance tube and single bypass.
Up to this moment we have measured a cooling performance of 500 mW @80K with this pulse tube at
room temperature conditions. To drive the pulse tube a flexure-bearing compressor was adapted to match

Conference: SPIE
Date: 2000
Published Papers
High reliability coolers under
development at Signaal-USFA
Page: 9 of 9
the volume and drive frequency of the pulse tube. Our goal is to increase the cooling performance up to 1
W @80K and further industrialise the combination of pulse tube and flexure bearing compressor.
High capacity Stirling cryocooler with flexure bearings
During the past year, we have also been working on the design of a high capacity Stirling cooler. The
initial goal with this cooler was to obtain a cooling power of more than 6 W @80K with a lifetime of more
than 20,000 hours MTTF. To achieve this we have designed a cooler based on a Stirling coldfinger with a
diameter of 20 mm.
During the beginning of this year we have build a first prototype of this cooler and we are currently running
an extensive test program on this cooler. With this first prototype, we have measured cooling
performances of more than 8 W @80K in room temperature conditions with an electrical input power of
only 150 Wac to the cooler.
We are currently optimising different parameters of the coldfinger, which determine the efficiency. In the
meantime, we are designing a flexure-bearing compressor with moving magnet technology to drive the
coldfinger in a final design, which will be tested before the end of this year. The diameter of the flexure-
bearing compressor will be less than 90 mm and the length of the compressor will be less than 200 mm,
resulting in a relatively compact cooler considering the high cooling performances.

CONCLUSIONS
From the presented work, it may be concluded that after three years of work we have been able to develop
a range of affordable and compact flexure bearing cryocoolers. These coolers are currently available for
prices that are in the same order of magnitude as conventional tactical coolers currently available in the
market. The design of the flexure bearing compressor which has a diameter of only 60 mm and a length
of 165 mm is such that it can be matched to different Stirling coldfingers and pulse tubes with comparable
void volumes.
Inside the compressor design a full support of the pistons in flexure bearings ensures absence of piston
wear. Application of moving magnet technology has resulted in the coils being outside the working gas
reducing risk of gas contamination and absence of critical components such as flying leads and glass
feed-throughs.
Many qualification tests performed on these coolers have shown that the compressor design can
withstand the severe environmental conditions required for tactical applications. Lifetime tests, which are
running at Signaal Usfa, indicate that the expected lifetime of more than 20,000 hours will be achieved. Its
just a matter of time to verify lifetime results in practice.
New developments currently running at Signaal Usfa offer opportunities for future markets requiring ultra-
low vibration levels or cooling powers of more than 6 W @80K combined with long lifetimes exceeding
20,000 hours MTTF. With a first high capacity cooler cooling performances of more than 8 W @80K with
only 150 Wac input power have been measured.